The Ten Commandments: What Whoopi Goldberg gets wrong: Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters (E3)

This entry is the third instalment of my blog ( and eventual podcast) Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters. While I have not recorded the audio file yet, this entry was written to be aired in podcast format and as such will (at times) read more like the transcript of a podcast than a traditional blog. So without further ado, here’s the third episode of Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters.

(Chapter Headings: Introduction)

Hello, my name is Matitya and welcome to Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters. Today’s topic, Whoopi Goldberg’s take on the Ten Commandments.

(Chapter Headings: What did she say?)

“Either thou shalt not kill for everybody and everything or we have to talk about all the things that you and I need to do …”

Whoopi Goldberg stated this while making the argument that the Ten Commandments do not forbid abortion, which is a strange argument for her to be making as it’s doubtful she would cease to be Pro-Choice if the Ten Commandments included “thou shalt not abort pregnancies” but regardless of that, one of Goldberg’s co-hosts challenged her on this point bringing up the sixth commandment being “Thou Shalt Not Kill” which is indeed written in the Book of Exodus Chapter 20 Verse 13 and repeated in the Book of Deuteronomy Chapter 5 Verse 17. If Goldberg were making an intellectually serious argument, then she would have replied by explaining why abortion is not killing, like how a Christian Socialist would argue that government ownership is not theft. Instead, Goldberg brought up the existence of wars and (at the suggestion of one of her co-hosts) capital punishment to prove that “Thou shalt not kill” was not universal and as such should not be taken seriously as a rebuttal.

That’s called ultracrepidarianism, acting as if one were an expert on something that one knows nothing about. Am I being harsh to Whoopi Goldberg here? Yes. And to be entirely fair, she’s hardly the only person to have a very shallow and superficial understanding of “thou shalt not kill”. And to be entirely clear, I am not about to litigate whether abortion is homicide, I’m here to explain how Whoopi Goldberg’s argument (and arguments similar thereto) get the Ten Commandments wrong.

(Chapter Headings: The Ten Commandments were given to the Israelites)

First things first, even though G-d Himself personally chiselled the Ten Commandments into two stone tablets, five on each, and later had His servant Moses carve the Ten Commandments into a second pair of stone tablets after the original tablets were shattered, G-d did not give the Ten Commandments to the world writ large. He gave them to the Israelites specifically.

(Chapter Headings: Noahide Law mandates the execution of murderers)

Secondly, the world writ large got a set of laws from G-d seventeen generations before the time of Moses. All the people of the Earth sinned against G-d so He destroyed them with a global flood but warned the one righteous man Noah to build an Ark of Gopher wood so that he and his family could survive the coming Deluge. After the flood, G-d told Noah and his family “And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of G-d made He man”. That’s a law that G-d gave to Noah and his family from whom all humans descend such that it applies to all humanity. So it’s not simply “ thou shalt not kill for everybody and everything”

(Chapter Headings: Christianity universalises the Law)

Now someone who agrees with Goldberg can respond by bringing up that, even though the Jewish interpretation is indeed that the laws that G-d gave Noah apply to the entire world and the laws that G-d gave Moses apply strictly to the Israelites, Goldberg was directing her remarks towards Christians who may not necessarily agree with this interpretation. And this would be a fair point considering that the Christian Bible says in the Gospel according to Matthew Chapter 5 Verse 17 “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” As such, it’s theoretically possible that the Ten Commandments were part of the teachings that early Christians were supposed to universalise. An actual Christian would be better at addressing if this were a legitimate interpretation of the Christian texts in the Christian tradition than I would be but I can accept that as the argument nonetheless.

So we have the following syllogism

1. The Ten Commandments apply to us all
2. The Ten Commandments say “thou shalt not kill”
3. Therefore, all killing is bad

Keep the second of those two premises in your back pocket since I will be bringing it up later, as I’ve already addressed the first one. For now, I’ll point out that the very situation in which the Ten Commandments were given quite clearly clashes with the conclusion of this syllogism. The Ten Commandments extremely stringently forbade the creation or worship of idols demanding the exclusive worship of G-d instead. Nevertheless, little more than a month after they were given, the Israelites carved a calf out of gold and worshipped it as an idol. When Moses came down from Mount Sinai and saw the Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf, he called upon the Tribe of Levi, which was the only tribe not to worship the Golden Calf, to kill everyone they saw worshipping the Golden Calf and they did. Moses then melted down the Golden Calf into a powder, mixed it with water and made all the Israelites drink it. Those Israelites who worshipped the Golden Calf died from drinking it and those who did not worship the Golden Calf, did not. Moses’s response is something that G-d supports within the text because it’s the penalty for breaking the very second of the Ten Commandments “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” In the Book of Deuteronomy Chapter 17, G-d mandates that idol worshippers be executed.

Even the story of Moses does not support the idea that it’s “thou shalt not kill for everybody and everything”. It says in the Book of Exodus Chapter 2 verses 11 and 12 “And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.” Moses then breaks up a fight between two Hebrews who expose the killing of the Egyptian taskmaster and Moses is sentenced to death and goes into exile in Midian where he intercedes on behalf of a group of girls being harassed by male shepherds and marries one of them, Tzipporah, with whom he fathers two sons Gershom and Eliezer. Then G-d commands Moses to return to Egypt to free the Hebrews from slavery and lead them to the land of Canaan that G-d had promised unto their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All three of these instances involve Moses interceding on behalf of someone who was (or appeared to be) threatened against the one who was threatening them. Indeed, these stories go to show why Moses was righteous enough to be chosen by G-d to lead His people. The very first one of them involves Moses killing someone. Now, don’t get me wrong, killing an Egyptian taskmaster who was beating a Hebrew slave to death isn’t murder. In fact, it’s the fulfilment of the commandment “neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour” which G-d issues to the Israelites in the Book of Leviticus Chapter 19 Verse 16. This is not one of the Ten Commandments, but it is one of the laws that G-d gave Moses. So it is not simply a matter of “thou shalt not kill for everybody and everything”

So the conclusion “therefore all killing is bad” is not one that is supported by the Hebrew Scriptures. And if we assume that the continuance of the law is what abrogating neither the Law nor the Prophets means, then it’s not supported by the Christian Bible either. The problem is that the syllogism

1. The Ten Commandments apply to us all
2. The Ten Commandments say “thou shalt not kill”
3. Therefore, all killing is bad

is a valid syllogism. But for an argument to be sound its reasoning must be not only valid but true. The fact that the conclusion follows logically from the premises is enough to qualify it as a valid argument, but it is not a sound argument because the premises are not true. I already addressed why the first premise is untrue at least in the Jewish understanding of it. I only alluded to the fact that the second premise is also untrue. Not solely due to taking tradition into account but on a literal grammatical level. The Ten Commandments were written in Hebrew. In the original Hebrew, the sixth of the Ten Commandments is “Loh Tirtsach”. When King James the First of England commissioned a new translation of the Bible into English in the 17th Century, resulting in the most popular translation of the Bible in the world today, Loh Tirstach was translated as “thou shalt not kill”. That is not a literal translation. In Hebrew “thou shalt not kill” would be “loh teharog” or “loh teharago”. It would not be “loh tirstach”. Loh Tirtsach would more literally translate as “Thou shalt not murder” because “tirstach” is derived from the Hebrew word “Leratsoach” meaning “to murder.”

There is a difference between killing and murder and it is a highly relevant distinction. When one person tries to kill another and the second person kills the first to save himself then it is not murder. When one person kills another person to save a third person that the first person was trying to kill, it is not murder. You can kill in self-defence or in defence of others without it being murder. Likewise, when a country is invaded, say when Russia invaded the Ukraine, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, when Germany invaded Poland, or when Hamas invaded Israel, the people of the invaded country could kill the invaders in response without it being murder. That’s why Goldberg’s argument that “thou shalt not kill” should apply to war does not work because it’s actually “thou shalt not murder” not “thou shalt not kill”

As to the “capital punishment” argument. The laws that G-d gave Moses say, in the Book of Numbers Chapter 35 Verse 31, “ Moreover ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to death.” So, as Dennis Prager often points out, people grounded in Biblical morality are not being hypocritical in supporting capital punishment.

(Chapter Headings: Only KJV)

I anticipate a rebuttal that the King James Bible is still the most common English translation of the Bible in the world and several Christian Churches, including non-Anglican Churches, tend to favour it. So if the King James Bible says “thou shalt not kill” instead of “thou shalt not murder” would that not indicate that, from a Christian perspective, it actually is a general prohibition of all killing rather than something that allows for the distinction between killing and murder? To which the answer is, I’m not a Christian but I consider it extraordinarily unlikely that Christianity or most Christian denominations would understand the Ten Commandments in a manner that outright contradicts the rest of the Old Testament. And it is worth noting that literally every Biblical quotation I used in this Matitya’s Musing, without exception, has been taken from the King James Bible. So it’s clear that, even if you use the King James translation, an absolutist condemnation of all killing is incompatible with a holistic understanding of the text.

Now, one can respond by bringing up the fact that, because I am Jewish, I have been focusing on the Old Testament, which consists predominantly of the Hebrew Scriptures, instead of on the New Testament. In response to them I would reiterate the point that the New Testament itself says “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” indicating that no it is not abrogating the laws that G-d gave Moses. Is it possible for there to be rebuttals to me in this regard? Yes. Maybe there are other passages in the New Testament that actually do repudiate the Ten Commandments and other Old Testament Jewish laws. Maybe there are traditional Christian interpretations of Matthew 5:17 that actually are compatible with abrogating Mosaic Law. And yes, I know some people will use the “turn the other cheek” and “resist not evil” passages in the New Testament to justify condemning all violence including war and capital punishment. But that was not the argument that Whoopi Goldberg was making. Her initial argument was essentially that

1. If something were not forbidden by the Ten Commandments, , then it cannot be all that sinful.
2. Abortion is not forbidden by the Ten Commandments.
3. Therefore abortion is not all that sinful.

And after she was challenged on this argument due to the Ten Commandments forbidding murder, her rebuttal boiled down to the following syllogism.

1. “Thou shalt not kill” is a functionally meaningless argument unless it is universally applied.
2. “Thou shalt not kill” is not universally applied.
3. Therefore, “thou shalt not kill” is a functionally meaningless argument.

(Chapter Headings: Conclusion)

Both her original argument and her revised argument were based on the Ten Commandments and they both belie a failure to understand what the Ten Commandments, in fact, say. If you want to make the argument that the Ten Commandments don’t forbid abortion, fine, make that argument. There is a lot of legitimacy in debating whether it’s fair to equate abortion with murder. If you want to make the argument that abortion is allowed by the Ten Commandments, then make the case that abortion is not murder. Pro-Choice advocates make that argument all the time and that’s a fair argument to make but don’t respond with an asinine excuse for an argument like “well what about wars? What about capital punishment” or “What about guns?” and don’t misrepresent what the Judeo-Christian morality says.

My name is Matitya and this has been an episode of Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters.